Michael shines in Aggies’ scrimmage

Updated 1:08 pm, Monday, April 18, 2011

Texas A&M's freshman quarterback Johnny Manzeil prepares to pass during the annual Maroon and White Game at Kyle Field in College Station on Saturday. (Stuart Villanueva/AP-College Station Eagle)

Texas A&M's freshman quarterback Johnny Manzeil prepares to pass during the annual Maroon and White Game at Kyle Field in College Station on Saturday. (Stuart Villanueva/AP-College Station Eagle)

Michael shines in Aggies’ scrimmage

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COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M tailback Christine Michael is back to dishing out the pain, instead of fighting through it, and that left him smiling widely Saturday afternoon.

"I don't have any more of a limp or any more pain," Michael said after rushing for 52 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 11 carries in the annual Maroon & White game at Kyle Field.

Michael, a junior from Beaumont, earned his first true "game" action since breaking his right tibia on Oct. 30 against Texas Tech. He missed the final five contests of the Aggies' 9-4 finish.

"At the beginning of spring practices I kept thinking about the injury, and I kept not wanting to get hit on it," Michael said.

That clearly wasn't the case on Saturday, when on his first series early in the scrimmage, he blasted past Toney Hurd Jr. for 15 yards. Then he finished off the drive with an 8-yard touchdown run that included a juke of Dustin Harris — in finally inflicting pain again with his considerable skills.

"In that first series I just said, 'What the heck, go out there and go for it and don't hold anything back,'" Michael said.

Michael, who led the Aggies with 844 rushing yards in 2009, should team this season with Cyrus Gray (1,133 rushing yards last season) in one of the country's stoutest 1-2 punches at running back.

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A&M coach Mike Sherman doesn't keep score in the scrimmage in the traditional sense — instead his staff adds and deducts points on plays throughout the contest. With that in mind, the Maroon offense defeated the White defense 133-119, as senior quarterback Ryan Tannehill completed 9 of 14 passes for 162 yards and a touchdown.

"Everything is a little more relaxed," Tannehill said of not being in a fight for the starting job for the first time since he arrived at A&M four years ago. "It's your job to just take the reins and handle it."

Sherman admitted he didn't expect to wow the estimated crowd of 16,500 with any innovation offensively or defensively — that will come starting in September.

"I just wanted to come away healthy because we accomplished in the spring what we wanted to accomplish," Sherman said. "We were very vanilla on both sides of the ball."

One player who added some electricity, however, was freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel, a Parade All-American who graduated early from Kerrville Tivy High School to join the Aggies for spring drills.

"He's very smart and he picks up on the offense very fast," Sherman said. "He's extremely explosive ... and he has a very strong arm."

Manziel made his case Saturday for winning the No. 2 slot behind Tannehill by completing 8 of 9 passes for 115 yards and two touchdowns, but Sherman said it's much too early for any such pecking order.

"The other two guys had good springs, and it will be a competition," Sherman said of Jameill Showers and Matt Joeckel. "(Manziel) is not quite in that level of knowing the offense just yet. He has a ways to go."